More by Lucie Brock-Broido

All about Carrowmore the lambs
Were blotched blue, belonging.
They were waiting for carnage or
Snuff. This is why they are born
To begin with, to end.
Ruminants do not frighten
At anything--gorge in the soil, butcher
Noise, the mere graze of predators.
All about Carrowmore
The rain quells for three days.
I remember how cold I was, the botched
Job of traveling. And just so.
Wherever I went I came with me.
She buried her bone barrette
In the ground's woolly shaft.
A tear of her hair, an old gift
To the burnt other who went
First. My thick braid, my ornament--
My belonging I
Remember how cold I will be.

Soon the electrical wires will grow heavy under the snow.
I am thinking of fire of the possibility of fire & then moving
Across America in a car with a powder blue dashboard,
Moving to country music & the heart
Is torn a little more because the song says the truth.
Because in the thirty-six things that can happen
To people, men & women, women & women,
Men & men, in all these things the soul is bound
To be broken somewhere along the line,
That clove-scented, air-colored wanderer blushing
With no memory, no inkling & then proceeds
Across America
In the sap green of the tropics,
Toward the cadmium of a bitter sunrise to a new age,
At the white impossible ice hour, starving,
Past the electric blue of the rivers melting down,
Above the nude, snuff, terra cotta, maybe fire,
Over the tiny fragile mound of finger bones
Of an Indian who died standing up,
Through the heliotrope of a song about the sunset,
To live the thirty-six things
& never comes home.

In thrice 10,000 seasons, I will come back to this world
In a white cotton dress. Kingdom of After My Own Heart.
Kingdom of Fragile. Kingdom of Dwarves. When I come home,
Teacups will quiver in their Dresden saucers, pentatonic chimes
Will move in wind. A covey of alley cats will swarm on the side
Porch & perch there, portents with quickened heartbeats
You will feel against your ankles as you pass through.
After the first millennium, we were supposed to die out.
You had your face pressed up against the coarse dyed velvet
Of the curtain, always looking out for your own transmigration:
What colors you would wear, what cut of jewel,
What kind of pageantry, if your legs would be tied
Down, if there would be wandering tribes of minstrels
Following with woodwinds in your wake.
This work of mine, the kind of work which takes no arms to do,
Is least noble of all. It's peopled by Wizards, the Forlorn,
The Awkward, the Blinkers, the Spoon-Fingered, Agnostic Lispers,
Stutterers of Prayer, the Flatulent, the Closet Weepers,
The Charlatans. I am one of those. In January, the month the owls
Nest in, I am a witness & a small thing altogether. The Kingdom
Of Ingratitude. Kingdom of Lies. Kingdom of How Dare I.
I go on dropping words like little pink fish eggs, unawares, slightly
Illiterate, often on the mark. Waiting for the clear whoosh
Of fluid to descend & cover them. A train like a silver
Russian love pill for the sick at heart passes by
My bedroom window in the night at the speed of mirage.
In the next millenium, I will be middle aged. I do not do well
In the marrow of things. Kingdom of Trick. Kingdom of Drug.
In a lung-shaped suburb of Virginia, my sister will be childless
Inside the ice storm, forcing the narcissus. We will send
Each other valentines. The radio blowing out
Vaughan Williams on the highway's purple moor.
At nine o'clock, we will put away our sewing to speak
Of lofty things while, in the pantry, little plants will nudge
Their frail tips toward the light we made last century.
When I come home, the dwarves will be long
In their shadows & promiscuous. The alley cats will sneak
Inside, curl about the legs of furniture, close the skins
Inside their eyelids, sleep. Orchids will be intercrossed & sturdy.
The sun will go down as I sit, thin armed, small breasted
In my cotton dress, poked with eyelet stitches, a little lace,
In the queer light left when a room snuffs out.
I draw a bath, enter the water as a god enters water:
Fertile, knowing, kind, surrounded by glass objects
Which could break easily if mishandled or ill-touched.
Everyone knows an unworshipped woman will betray you.
There is always that promise, I like that. Kingdom of Kinesis.
Kingdom of Benevolent. I will betray as a god betrays,
With tenderheartedness. I've got this mystic streak in me.